MENTAL FUNCTION 417 



forms and colors; if we examine this wood with a microscope we shall 

 see its structure; if we lift the chair we shall find it of a certain weight, 

 etc. It is only simple facts like these that perception by the senses gives 

 us, although the facts as to an object may be numerous to almost any 

 conceivable extent. We all really know much more about this black 

 wooden object, however, than our perception could ever give us. In the 

 first place we know what a chair is, an object to sit on, and that it is 

 called in English a " chair;" we know perhaps how it was made, about 

 how much it cost, how much it is worth, that it would burn, float if 

 thrown into a pond, hurt us if we ran against it, be too low for a 

 young child at table, etc. Furthermore, more or less unconsciously, 

 perhaps, we compare it with other chairs in some or many of the respects 

 which pertain to chairs. We are perceiving only one chair, this one, but 

 we have in mind all the time more or less unconsciously many of the 

 chairs we have seen, bought, used, broken, heard of, read of, and told 

 about. In short, we all have in our minds a general idea, notion, con- 

 cept, expressed in English print and speech by the symbolic characters 

 chair. The parts of this concept chair in the minds of each are many, 

 and they were derived from very many sources. Each person's concept 

 of chair differs theoretically from that of every other according to the 

 percepts and the concepts which have united and fused together to form 

 each one's concept. If one of us is an artist, he knows chair-concept in 

 one way; if one is a furniture-dealer, in another way; if one be a lover of 

 ease, in another way; if one be cold for want of fuel, possibly in still 

 another way; and so on without end. Each of us, then, has a notion of 

 chair in his mind provided he ever saw one or a picture of one, or 

 heard of one, or read of one before. Yet each of our chair-concepts 

 is different from every other. 



This then is the process of conception : the abstraction of the qualities, 

 characteristics, relations, categories, uses, etc., of objects, real or ideal, and 

 the combination of these qualities, relations, etc., into general notions. 

 Only because of "the divine gift of speech" was this abstraction and 

 conceptualization possible man gives a name to a thing, and a concept 

 of it becomes forthwith attainable for all men's use. In the name of an 

 object is epitomized for us the key by which we can recall the details, 

 qualities, relations, etc., which for each of us make up the concept of 

 that object. 



Besides concepts of objects there are concepts of every sort of quality, 

 relation, use, etc. These fused together make up our knowledge 

 of life. Each of us has in his mental process not only concepts of quality, 

 but concepts of relation of innumerable sorts, of shape, weight, hardness, 

 porosity, value, perceptibility, inflammability, salability, usefulness, 

 space, causality, reality, infinity, etc. All these and many other sorts 

 of concept have united to partake in our knowledge of the world and all 

 within and around it and above it. Our knowledge is in terms of con- 

 cepts and not in terms of percepts. A farm-hand, for example, sees 

 more blades of grass in a day of haying than a city-child might see in 

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